Kim Jong-un has inspected North Korea’s first military spy satellite and given the go-ahead for its “future action plan”, according to state media.
Kim met the “non-permanent satellite launch preparatory committee” on Tuesday before viewing the satellite, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
A month ago, Kim said construction of the satellite was completed and gave the green light for its launch. That report came about a week after Pyongyang launched what it said was a new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, marking a major breakthrough in its banned weapons programmes. ICBMs and space launch capabilities use shared technologies.
The satellite appears to be a polygonal cylinder, covered in gold insulating foil and fitted with solar panels. The photographs have been partly blurred. Kim was pictured a month earlier at the “National Aerospace Development Administration” (Nada) in front of a screen showing something similar in shape, also blurred.
On Tuesday, “after acquainting himself in detail with the work of the committee, [Kim] inspected the military reconnaissance satellite No 1, which is ready for loading after undergoing the final general assembly check and space environment test”, KCNA said.
Kim accused the US and South Korea of escalating what he called “confrontational moves” against the North and said his country would exercise its right to self-defence.
Kim then “approved the future action plan of the preparatory committee”, KCNA added.
The development of a military reconnaissance satellite was one of the key defence projects outlined by Kim in 2021.
In December 2022, North Korea said it had carried out an “important final-stage test” for the development of a spy satellite, which it said it would complete by April this year.
At the time, experts in South Korea quickly raised doubts about the results, saying the quality of black-and-white images released by North Korea – purportedly taken from a satellite – were poor.
Pyongyang has not provided a launch date, though Kim said in April that the satellite would be sent up “at the planned date”.
North Korea in 2022 declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear power, seemingly ending the possibility of denuclearisation talks.
Pyongyang would struggle to do satellite reconnaissance with its own technology and without technological help from Russia or China, analysts say.
Still, “since North Korea’s reconnaissance satellites are an important factor in the event of a nuclear pre-emptive strike, they pose a significant threat to the South”, Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP last month.
In an address to South Korea’s parliament on Wednesday, Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said his country was ready to increase military engagement to mitigate threats to regional security, including from North Korea.
Washington and Seoul have ramped up defence cooperation in response, staging joint military exercises with advanced stealth jets and high-profile US strategic assets.
North Korea views such exercises as rehearsals for invasion and described them as “frantic” drills “simulating an all-out war” against Pyongyang.
With Agence France-Presse
